Fetal Position
by emotea
Summary: Saul admits that he has a crush on one of his ex-clients, Jesse Pinkman. What can he say? The kid melts his butter. Short and sweet. Saul/Jesse fluff.


Maybe it was the way he threw a bag over my head, drove me out to BFE at some ungodly hour, placed me in front of a grave plot, and pointed a gun towards me while wearing a ski mask. Maybe it was the way he burst into my office and kicked the shit out of me and left me with this beautiful circular scar on my forehead from when he yet again had a gun on me. But let me tell ya, that kid melts my butter. That there is romance Stephanie Meyer couldn't top.

Or maybe, more realistically and less sarcastically, it was this one time way back when. After the rehab and the Wayfarer 515 disaster but before the Fring situation that went down south faster than Clint Eastwood's erection.

Jesse Pinkman was paying me a visit (quite literally considering I charged hourly), and he was suspiciously quiet for a guy who acted like a little kid. You know, those little creatures who have to touch everything and ask "why" every nine seconds? He was kinda like that. So when a kid is quiet, you know something's up.

Every now and then I'd look up from my game of solitaire just to make sure he didn't keel over and die in my office, and I couldn't help but notice that his eyes were filled with sadness. Emptiness. Just pain. And who could blame the poor kid? I mean, if I woke up next to my dead girlfriend I'd probably off myself. But I digress.

"Hey, you okay, kiddo?" I asked.

"M'fine," Jesse managed to reply while he rested his head on his hand, never making eye contact with me.

"You know I charge hourly, right?"

"It's fine."

I knew the little shit stain didn't tend to spend his money wisely, but paying to just sit in a room with me in dead silence was borderline creepy. But hey, I'd be dicking around on the computer anyways. Might as well get paid for it.

"You sad?" I peeled my eyes away from the screen and saw the glint of hopelessness in his eyes again.

"I'm fine."

"You're fine, I'm fine, it's fine. You have a very wide vocabulary."

He didn't reply, and I'd lost my third game in a row. I threw my hands in the air and silently mouthed obscenities. Solitaire, if you didn't know, is a game filled with intensity.

"Alright," I sighed as I shut the laptop and swept it aside, "you wanna talk about it, champ?"

He glared at me like I asked him to lick the dog shit off my $500 crocodile skin shoes, but still, he did not reply, and the awkward silence was starting to kill me.

"C'mon, say something. Anything. You just gonna sit there and look like Peggy-Sue dumped you on prom night, or what?"

"Do you always have to talk?" he finally said and lifted a brow.

"Yes! If I didn't, I don't know what I'd do with myself. I'd probably start blurting things out like Tourette's or something."

And again he went silent, just staring at nothing in particular, maybe making designs in the carpet in his head. Then there was a noise, but it didn't come from him. It was thunder creeping upon us from the distance.

"Do you always have to be so quiet?" I asked, tempted to open up the laptop again but I don't think I could have handled another loss without breaking the damn thing.

"I don't have anything to say."

"Sure you do. Quiet people always have the best stories because they've been saving them up in their heads for so long."

"How would you know?"

"I guess I wouldn't, no."

And again, the moody little criminal gave me the silent treatment. I checked my watch, rubbed seemingly nothing from the face of it, and tapped my fingertips on the desk impatiently. The storm was coming in now, making the leaves on the trees outside clatter together as the thunder became louder and louder until one hit so bad it rattled the windows in my office, and I was getting uncomfortable.

"Think it's gonna rain?" I couldn't seem to give up on small talk.

He just shrugged. Little shit.

The thunder clashed and rumbled like it was the damn apocalypse, and I couldn't help but shift in my seat and rub my face with a sharp inhale. Jesse's eyes turned to meet mine and he raised an eyebrow.

"You scared of thunder?" his lips curled into a half-smile.

"Of course not. What am I, a twelve-year-old girl-Jesus!" it sounded like the sky itself was being torn apart, and embarrassingly enough, I jumped and nearly fell out of my chair.

But at least that made the other half of Jesse's mouth curl into a full smile. He sat up in his chair and looked at me like a bully on the playground.

"You are scared of thunder."

"Yeah, I am, okay?" I snapped and scooted closer to the desk so I wouldn't go flying next time one hit.

"It's just clouds bumpin' into each other. Don't be such a wuss."

"I know that, smart ass! I just don't like the noise."

"Saul Goodman's afraid of thunder," he mocked, "you afraid of vacuuming, too?"

"No, but I have Consuela vacuum for me, anyway."

"You're afraid of vacuum cleaners, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not!"

Before I was able to explain how I was perfectly capable of working a damn vacuum cleaner, another huge clash of thunder hit. And yeah, I jumped for the second time in front of the puny brat.

"For real, though, why do you hate it so much? It can't hurt you," he leaned in closer to the desk and folded his hands together.

"I dunno, you can't run away from it. You got this horrifying noise coming out of the sky and there's nothin' you can do about it unless you got some $80 noise cancelling headphones."

"Maybe you should invest in some."

"Yeah, maybe I should-" another crash of thunder cut me off and I jerked in my seat. I sighed and rubbed my brow with closed eyes, hoping the stupid storm would just go away, but it only got worse.

Rain started pouring and hitting the windows like needles and the thunder just would not quit, and to be honest, I was about to bail on the kid and go look into investing in a bomb shelter instead of headphones. But the scrambled, panicked thoughts were suddenly disbanded by a gentle hand touching my shoulder. I snapped my head towards the culprit, and it was, of course, Pinkman.

"I don't need to be babied," I nudged him away from me, but for a second there I did appreciate the gesture.

"Fine," he sounded offended, but he didn't leave my side.

"C'mon, kid, don't you have somewhere else to be? Go back to your meth cuisine and your Dungeons and Dragons."

"Really? Dungeons and Dragons?"

"I don't know what you kids play!"

The horrible thunder hit again and I think I might have actually let out a little whimper while I continuously rubbed my brow like that had some kind of magical healing power that would make everything go away. Jesse quietly giggled and set his hand on my shoulder again.

"C'mon, you big baby," he tugged at my sleeve like he wanted me to follow him, and although I knew he couldn't save me from the thunder, I decided to follow anyway.

He brought be only a few steps away from my desk in between two pillars. I watched him plop himself on the floor and bring his knees to his chest and he patted the ground beside him. I hesitated for a moment, but I went for it. However, the corner was way too small for the two of us if we didn't want to sit close enough to contract whatever the other had.

"Sit like this," he gave me a warm smile which was at first creepy and life-threatening, but maybe that was just the paranoia from the scary cloud monster.

I forced a flat smile (if that's what you wanna call it), and brought my knees to my chest like he told me to and I wrapped my arms around my legs.

"Fetal position. It's supposed to be comforting," he said.

"Great, you got me pinned to a wall and you're throwin' positions around. What next? You gonna make out with me? Please, tell me you don't have herpes before you stick your tongue down my throat. At least do that for me, because if I have to go through that again-"

"Saul, shut the fuck up for once in your life," Jesse nudged me with his shoulder.

And so I did shut the fuck up for once in my life. We sat beside each other silently as the storm reached its peak of monstrosity, and eventually the twitching and anxious head turning every time some clouds bumped into each other subsided. Then it was only the sounds of trees rocking in the wind and rain tapping the building like applause that were heard while the room occasionally flickered with lightning.

And I have to admit, it was nice to finally not feel the need to spout metaphors very other sentance. I felt relaxed-way more relaxed than those weird Japanese massage machines could do me. I almost wanted to take a nap, but then I jumped a little, and it wasn't from the storm. Jesse's head had fallen onto my shoulder. I carefully turned my head to see the top of his eyelids closed and his shoulders steadily rising and falling. He beat me to it.

I smiled to myself and let my head rest on top of his, and that's the last thing I remember. So I must have fallen asleep, too.

Long story short, I cuddled Jesse Pinkman to sleep during a thunder storm and ended up with a crush on the little twerp.

And that brings us back to here, to the present. Here I sit lethargically in my shady studio apartment in Omaha with nothing but a nostalgic state of mind and a bucket collecting rain water from a leak in my ceiling. Every time thunder shakes the paper-thin walls, I can't help but let my homo out and pretend that twerp's still resting his head on my shoulder.

God damn it.


End file.
